Are you a fudging fudger?

[catsclaw227]

So, serious question, why roll the dice at all? If you've already judged that it's a good idea, and you already know about yourself that you don't want good ideas to possibly get screwed by the dice, why roll the dice?

I'm asking, more precisely, why go through the motions of rolling the dice, hoping for a good result. You already know you'll only accept a good result? In that situation I might very well roll the dice, but I'd do so already knowing that it's just for appearance's sake.

I really don't understand the point of rolling, looking at the result, and then discarding the result. Just don't make a "genuine" roll in the first place, if you don't want a random result in the range provided by the dice.

Given the context of my comment, it's a good question.

We had a game just two weekends ago, and I almost just handwaved the results because the plan was right on. I didn't, though because... well I don't know. Maybe I felt compelled to roll the dice because we are playing D&D and dice needed to be involved or something (OK, partially in jest, but there's a smidge of truth to that)

I swear I have a couple of players that roll so bad it's sick. And there they were... rolling no more than a 3 on a d20 like 8 times in a row. I (the DM) was rolling 15+ and the other two players couldn't get higher than a 8 or 10. And the fun was wiped away from the table.

I mean, really, we are there to have fun and the fun was immediately sucked out. I supposed it comes back to my fault as a DM for even rolling in the first place, but I have been recently seduced by some "roll-em-and-weep" blog posts and threads in RPG cyberspace and I let it influence me.

I have been trying hard to open my mind a bit to other playing and DMing styles and try some things out that have been anathema to me in the past.

Now... this was an isolated incident, and not indicative of my gaming experience in general. I don't willy-nilly change around my DMing style because of where the winds blow, but I have been trying to be more open-minded lately.

Maybe I should have just rolled fake or not rolled at all and then described the outcome as expected. I should have changed some of the parameters behind the screen on the fly, but I didn't. We've been rolling out in the open for 4e, so I naturally rolled out in the open.

I know better, and I like to think I am a pretty good DM, but this time was bad. So, in my opinion, sometimes it's OK to fudge the dice. I might start rolling more behind the screen.

 

[Ariosto]

I mean, really, we are there to have fun and the fun was immediately sucked out.

Different things are "fun" or "not fun" to different people.

What would have sucked out the fun for me is not the prospect of a game tactic failing but the drudgery of dice rolling. Making it objectively futile would hardly improve the reception.

Besides being boring when it is simply pointless, dice rolling is an activity that in itself involves no decision-making on my part. The game, for me, lies chiefly in the choices I make. Chance adds interest, but taking a long time between decision points leaves my mind looking for something more engaging. Balancing those factors is part of the art of design (and, again, different people desire different balances).

 

[The Shaman]

*snip'd*

When you designed the encounter, did you consider the consequences of the players rolling badly? Or did you design the encounter presuming they would roll well?

 

[catsclaw227]

When you designed the encounter, did you consider the consequences of the players rolling badly? Or did you design the encounter presuming they would roll well?

Without going into specific detail (I want to take the toddler for walk, the weather is finally good!), the PCs went off the beaten path and the encounter wasn't something that I had an opportunity to put some thoughtful design into.

The base-level circumstances were in place, and the players knew of the situational circumstances after doing some investigation, and though normally the PCs would have been challenged, their plan would have made it much easier. Easier, meaning that if they rolled even moderately poorly, they could have won or at least not been as badly screwed as they were.

But this isn't as much about my bad decisions as a DM, yes I had a Bad DM Day, but instead it is about not letting a ghastly series of bad rolls kill the fun.

I even had one player, normally even-headed and laid-back, get badly frustrated. He even said to me that sometimes he wishes I would just fudge the dice when they are going that bad.

Hey, it was a bad game. They happen. The topic is about fudging dice, not so much about encounter design. Yes, they can run parallel, but no DM can account for a run of dice like they saw and still keep the game challenging most other times.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

As a DM I used to fudge dice rolls in combat (in favour of the PC's - I can't think of any rolls I fudged against them). At the start of the current campaign I made the conscious decision to let the dice fall where they may. I found that decision to be very liberating as it now all comes down to how the dice decide to behave. Of course that could result in a TPK that wouldn't have previously happened (I probably would have fudged some dice to avoid it) but I'm comfortable with that.

As a player I think I would prefer the DM to let the dice fall where they may and not fudge any results.

Olaf the Stout

 

[pawsplay]

I call boogeyman.

There's this specter that comes up in these discussions, of some godawful GM lurking back in the shadows - Beware! If you allow fudging, the nasty, railroading, capricious BoogyGM* will get you! WooooOOOOOOooooo!

It seems to me to be the rhetoric of fear as applied to RPGs.

What?

Is it possible to abuse fudging? Sure. But you can abuse the physical rulebooks, too - they've got pointy corners, and someone can take your eye out with one of those. Go through the books, and look at all the things the GM is supposed to do - every single one of them can be done in an abusive manner.** If your GM is capricious and generally craptastic enough to worry about, he or she will be so whether or not fudging is technically allowed in the game. If they are really that horrid, the promise not to fudge is worthless anyway.

Yeah.

Not quite sure what the point of your post was. Since we seem to be agreeing that at the extremes of behavior can be bad, I can't figure out what, if anything, I'm supposed to disagree with. On the other hand, I can't help but feel the boogeyman comment was a jab in some way. I'm left feeling both baffled and slightly offended.

 

[pawsplay]

I agree to some extent. At the same time, though, I personally think that a game system has to earn your trust as much as a GM does, and that not all instances of trusting your GM more than a system are misplaced. I say this as a player as well, mind; I trust my buddy Jeff to provide a better estimation of his world and the risks we take in that world than I trust whichever edition of D&D he's using at the time, and I trust him to be fair about it.

Another good example might be the common GM advice of "if failure would not present any interesting results, don't call for a roll in the first place."

I tend to generalize these principles to, "If the system doesn't produce interesting results, don't play it in the first place."

 

[Flatus Maximus]

So, serious question, why roll the dice at all? If you've already judged that it's a good idea, and you already know about yourself that you don't want good ideas to possibly get screwed by the dice, why roll the dice?

It's not just a serious/good question, it is the question.

Fudging? What is the flippin' point of rolling dice if you don't intend to use the result?

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[CleverNickName]

Oh I fudge rolls all the time. (shrug) I always thought that DMs were supposed to do this.